


Fair

by FakeCirilla9



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Bonding, Canon Compliant, Canon Relationships, F/M, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Friendship, Gen, Multi, Post-Canon, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28054524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FakeCirilla9/pseuds/FakeCirilla9
Summary: A fair featuring my four favourite characters
Relationships: Mai & Suki (Avatar), Mai/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar)
Kudos: 37





	Fair

"Whoa! It's you! Don't throw any knives at me!" Sokka calls out, shielding himself with his hands.

The remaining three look at him with varying expressions of confusion.

"That's my girlfriend Mai," Zuko presents.

Sokka shuffles closer to him and, throwing an arm around his shoulders, takes him to the side.

"How is your girlfriend the knife-throwing assassin?" he whispers confidently.

"Are you the one to tell, boomerang guy?" Suki asks from nearby.

"How come you don't know it?" Zuko marvels. "I told you about her."

"You what?" Mai cuts in.

"You met her at the Boiling Rock," Zuko continues his explanation.

Sokka scratches his head. "There was all the battle commotion..."

"Your girlfriend works as our bodyguard," Zuko adds.

"As your bodyguard," Suki smoothly cuts in, "I'd say we stand too long in one place. Let's move to the stands. Let's have some fun!'

"Blimey," Mai comments in a listless voice.

*

"Alright, everyone, watch this spectacular hit!" Sokka yells before throwing a ring in a toss game. The missile catches on the pole but hangs tipped to the side, only partly touching the ground when it stops rotating.

Suki aims briefly in total silence and when she throws, her ring lands perfectly on the post. Sokka looks crestfallen at that but a kiss from Suki on the cheek returns him quickly to his usual merriness.

"Are you bored?" Zuko looks at Mai, concerned.

"I'd better not answer that."

At the stall, Sokka argues with the tradesman.

"A snow rat?! I want that big polar bear!"

"For the big polar bear," the seller explains, "you'd need to have three hits in a row. You got just two and one was unclean."

Zuko moves towards them.

"Seriously?" Mai comments. "You gonna get involved in that?"

"Well, that's what we're here for. Try to have some fun."

Zuko takes two rings and tosses them with both hands at the same time. 

"How?!" Sokka gawks at the circlets rolling around two poles.

"Double sword training," Zuko gloats.

The vendor hands him the big polar bear mascot. Zuko accepts it hesitantly. He glances at Mai who glares daggers at him in return. Zuko shoves the toy at Sokka.

"Here, take that."

"I can't, it's you who won," Sokka refuses half-heartedly.

"But it's you who found the game and chose the prize. Besides, it's ridiculous."

"It is not!" Sokka rips the toy from Zuko and hugs the enormous white mass. "It is an honourable trophy for a won competition," he defends.

Suki notices Mai's sour expression.

"He's really trying, you know," she offers.

"To get rid of the toy? I'm impressed."

"To make you happy."

"Usually, when he does that, he forgets about me entirely."

Suki's about to protest but the Fire Lord is currently pulling the plush polar bear back and forth with her boyfriend.

"I've got an idea for a true group bonding game!" She exclaims. "Rope pulling!"

*

Sokka looks at the rope with the idea guy expression.

"So obviously we cannot have two men on one side," he declares. "No offence, ladies, but we are simply stronger."

"Oh, come on, Sokka!" Suki calls. "Just line up behind me."

"Hmph," Sokka rubs his chin, "no."

"No?"

"No. You distract me and I'll lose my strength. We need to regroup." 

He walks to the other end of the rope. 

"Would you mind?" he addresses Zuko about to take his place at Mai's back.

Zuko grabs the rope tighter. "I **would** mind."

Mai sighs. "Zuko, please, we've only just met and the guy's too afraid of me anyway to actually touch me."

"I am not!" Sokka protests, reaching out with his hand to prove himself by poking Mai but Zuko catches him by the wrist and snarls at him.

"Whoa, you have your bad guy face again," Sokka notes.

"That is just my face."

"Nope. When you're angry, your eye- your good eye is slitted just like the-"

Suki's fan lands on Sokka's lips and she pulls Zuko by the other arm before it forms a fireball. 

"My lord, could we possibly start? Would you accompany me, sire, during the game?"

"Fine," Zuko agrees reluctantly.

They tug the rope back and forth and it's an even game, with each of them determined to win. Eventually, the cloth marking the rope's centre nears on Sokka and Mai's side and Sokka grins triumphantly but then Zuko pulls with double effort. The rope goes fully to Zuko and Suki. They lose balance and fall in a tangle of limbs, Kyoshi dress and long robes.

Sokka and Mai somehow remain standing.

"Yea, it's only gentlemanly that we let them win, right?" Sokka comments.

"It is not when you didn't lose on purpose."

Sokka glances over at her.

"This is really not your kind of fun, huh? Assuming that you know how to have fun being the Fire Nation..."

They look at Zuko trapped under the pile of clothes as Suki tries to get off him and fails at keeping an entirely straight face about it. Sokka's not really jealous. Zuko's face is too angsty for any attempt at flirt. He's entirely too angsty to be Suki's type, judging by Sokka himself.

"Actually," Mai says at his side, "some sights are worth seeing. Okay, so now's my turn at choosing a game, right?"

There is that glint in her eyes that Sokka has seen already before: before she threw knives at the Avatar team.

*

Sokka lights up when he sees the target with a big turtle duck resemblance painted in the middle of it.

"That should be easy," he announces.

Suki notices Zuko's more-than-usually-gloomy expression but she doesn't have time to ask nor act about it for Mai pulls him away, grabbing his hand.

"Let's make this more interesting," she aligns Zuko in front of the target.

"Uh, you realize the points are gathered by scoring a bull's eye in this game?" Zuko asks.

"Don't worry, we'll alter the rules." 

Mai turns to Sokka and Suki standing there with hanging jaws.

"We throw around him," she instructs. "The one who's the closest without hurting him wins."

"What if we actually hurt him?" Sokka voices his objections.

"Don't you trust your marksmanship, boomerang guy?"

"I have got some concerns throwing knives at my friend."

"Sokka, that's okay," Zuko speaks up. "I appreciate your worry but I trust her."

"I trust Suki too but it doesn't mean I'd be okay with-"

He doesn't finish as Mai throws the first knife that sticks right next to Zuko's neck. Zuko doesn't do as much as a blink. Sokka flinches for him.

"Are you okay with that?!" he seeks Suki's support.

"I know she will never hurt him."

The next knife rams so close to the face that Zuko's bangs move from the airflow around the missile.

"The Fire Nation is messed up," Sokka states. "And you were too long with them to notice just how messed they are." 

He steps between Mai and her prey. "Stop!"

Mai's not impressed. "We do this since we were kids."

"More like I did it once. You start to make a habit out of it," Zuko looks at her fondly like a normal guy would look at a girl that sweet-talked him.

Sokka drags him away from the line of fire.

"Nobody throws knives at Zuko while I'm here," Sokka announces, his older brother and chieftain's son's protective instinct triggered. Then he addresses Zuko quieter: "Don't you have some other means of expressing feelings in Fire Nation? Just buy her a bunch of flowers! All girls like romantic stuff like that."

"All girls?" Zuko repeats pointedly.

Sokka glances at the girls merrily engaged in throwing knives at the exposed target of a turtle duck resemblance.

"Oh, I've got it! We'll buy them weapon sheaths!"

Already putting the idea into practice, he pulls Zuko along.

"Where are you two going?" Suki calls after them.

"Manly business," Sokka replies crisply.

"Let's have some girly business ourselves," Mai says.

*

At the stand, Zuko glares at the displayed products like judging their unworthiness. 

Sokka takes matters into his own hands. "We'll need something red. And expensive. Gilded with gold."

"Like Fire Nation stuff?" the seller specifies.

"That's not how we do every thing in the country," Zuko starts.

"Exactly," Sokka speaks over him. "Like for him. Only more girly."

The seller produces something encrusted with pink flowers of golden centres.

"Absolutely not," Zuko says.

"Absolutely yes," Sokka says at the same time.

*

"Girly stuff, huh?" Suki asks. "So we'll go do some make-up? I don't really wear any besides Kyoshi warrior paintings."

"Hmpf, I just said it so they didn't feel all that important about themselves, being the only mysterious ones."

"So maybe let's buy them some souvenir?" Suki proposes. "A keepsake will remind of a nice day like this one and we'll make the excuse more substantial."

"I won't buy him carnival sweets," Mai demures. "That'd be like competing with Iroh for his attention and that's below my dignity."

"Plush toys then! Like the polar bear they already won. Sokka loves that."

Mai looks at her, conveying quite a lot without words.

"There must be something Zuko loves," Suki doesn't give up.

Mai's glance falls at the target shot through with blades.

"Actually..."

*

"You compelled me to buy this horrendous stuff, so now's my turn," Zuko claims.

"I have no idea what to buy her anyway, so go ahead," Sokka relents easily.

Zuko looks at him.

"That's easy," he says. "A fan."

"What? No. These are no usual fans that she carries. They're weapons."

"You were the one for girly stuff." Zuko shrugs. "Suki knows how to handle it in a fight or at an official party."

"And you are the one to tell, huh?"

"She's at my side day and night basically- Uh, that didn't sound that well?"

"Easy, I'm just teasing. She's faithful to me and it's not like your dragon lady would let anyone too close to you anyway."

"It's not like that," Zuko denies.

"Sure," Sokka scoffs. "Tell me yet you're the one who's in charge in that relationship."

"We have gender equality," Zuko says, indignant. "Not that you can grasp the concept."

"Because I'm a peasant? A savage from the pole?"

"I didn't mean it like that. There are just these cultural differences..."

"I doubt you'd ever go as far as I did in terms of gender equality," Sokka says.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Zuko's curiosity grows.

Sokka looks to both sides, making sure he's not eavesdropped, before confining:

"I wore Kyoshi make up."

"No way."

"And a dress."

Zuko comes as close to a grin as he probably can.

"And I'll kill you if you tell anyone."

*

"This one?" Suki's eyebrows go up.

"Yep," Mai answers curtly.

"But maybe something more... lordly? Manly?" Suki prods.

"No."

"A grown-up specimen resemblance at least?!"

"No," Mai repeats stubbornly and exchanges a light purse of money for a toy turtle duckling.

*

"Green like her robes or red for contrast's sake?" Sokka wonders aloud. 

"Just pick up something already!" Zuko urges at the verge of endurance.

"Red is too Fire Nation on one hand but then she works for you now."

"I swear this is the longest shopping I ever took part in and I accompanied Ty Lee once."

"Can I see the one you showed before the previous one again?" Sokka addresses the stallholder. 

Zuko grabs the cursed thing out of the frightened man's hand. "We'll take this one," he announces.

"But-" Sokka begins.

Zuko pays.

"Hmm, maybe that's the best one," Sokka says.

*

"Isn't it too shallow for a gift?" Mai asks sceptically.

"Nope, it's Sokka. If he loves something more than me, it's food." Suki replies and packs a load of seal jerky.

*

"I should have chosen a blue one," Sokka decides belatedly. "If it's meant an ornament for parties, I could accompany her and we'd match in colours."

Zuko seems exasperated.

"Sokka, I love you as a friend but if you don't shut up this moment, I might burn you."

*

"Aw, Sokka, that's so nice you thought about me!" Suki greets her boyfriend cheerfully upon their return, examining her gift. "It is beautiful. And I have only seal jerky for you," she produces a paper bag.

"Are you kidding?" Sokka exclaims. "That's the best present for the meat guy!"

A few steps away from their enthusiastic hugging, Mai asks: "Do I have a stain on my blouse?"

Zuko startles. "No. Why?"

"I don't know. You keep staring as some stalker."

"I've got something for you. And it's not a plushie, I swear."

Zuko takes out the sheath.

"That's very... flowery," Mai comments.

"You don't like it," Zuko judges.

"I didn't say it!"

"I can see it."

Zuko is about to take the scabbard away but Mai clenches her hand on the gift. 

"I like it."

She pulls some of her knives off the hiding places in her clothes and packs them like a professional assassin.

"I like you with the knives," Zuko confesses.

"Always knew you must have some cranky kinks," Sokka mumbles with his mouth full of seal jerky.

Zuko looks at him with vague disgust.

Mai finishes her work with the knives. 

"I've got something for you too," she says.

"Really?" Zuko lights up.

Mai pulls out the turtle duckling. Zuko stares at it for a long while without saying a word, like he was frozen by Katara's ice bending.

"Are you okay?" Suki prompts.

"Yeah. Yeah, more than okay. Thank you, Mai." He leans to her and kisses her in her temple.


End file.
